Background to the preparation of the Croatian Food Safety Strategy

Preparing an effective Food Safety Strategy is considered to be a precondition for the improvement of food safety systems, especially in countries that are integrating within the EU single market that requires the same approach to food safety and the same level of consumer protection. Croatia has been challenged in recent years in enforcing its institutional and legislative food safety framework, especially through EU pre-accession activities and various international projects. This paper discusses the procedures that Croatian authorities have been carrying out to prepare the national Food Safety Strategy based on the modern FAO/WHO food safety approach that incorporates a risk analysis framework. The Croatian model for the preparation of the Strategy presented in this paper could serve as a help to other developing countries on their way to carrying out this complex and multi-institutional task.